Create a new swarm on Microsoft Azure in Docker Cloud

Estimated reading time:
4 minutes

You can now create new Docker Swarms from within Docker Cloud as well as
register existing swarms.

When you create a swarm, Docker Cloud connects to the Cloud provider on your
behalf, and uses the provider’s APIs and a provider-specific template to launch
Docker instances. The instances are then joined to a swarm and the swarm is
configured using your input. When you access the swarm from Docker Cloud, the
system forwards your commands directly to the Docker instances running in the
swarm.

Note: If you are using a Microsoft Azure Visual Studio MSDN
subscription, you need to enable programmatic deployments on the Docker CE
VM Azure Marketplace item. See the Microsoft Azure blog post on Working with
Marketplace Images on Azure Resource
Manager for instructions on how to do this.

Create a swarm

If necessary, log in to Docker Cloud and switch to Swarm Mode

Click Swarms in the top navigation, then click Create.

Alternatively, you can select + -> Swarm from the top navigation to
get to the same page.

Enter a name for the new swarm.

Your Docker ID is pre-populated. In the example, our swarm name
is “vote_swarm”.

Tip: Use all lower case letters for swarm names. No spaces, capitalized letters, or special characters other than ., _, or - are allowed.

Select Microsoft Azure as the service provider, select a channel (Stable or Edge) from the drop-down menu, provide an App name, and select the Azure
Subscription you want to use.

Docker for Azure bootstraps all of the recommended infrastructure to start
using Docker on Azure automatically. You don’t need to worry about rolling
your own instances, security groups, or load balancers when using Docker for
Azure. (To learn more, see Why Docker for Azure.)

This takes a few minutes. When the swarm is ready, its indicator on the Swarms page shows steady green.

Note: At this time, you cannot add nodes to a swarm from
within Docker Cloud. To add new nodes to an existing swarm,
log in to your Azure account, and add nodes manually. (You can
unregister or dissolve swarms directly from Docker Cloud.)